The committee recognized six decades during which Europe had renounced violence and become a beacon of "peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights," both on the subcontinent and beyond.(1) The European Union's peace model has been a tremendous success, especially when considering World War One and Two, and then the Cold War. Tens of millions of people were killed across Europe, with national boundaries being redrawn. While the wars created unspeakable refugee crises, immense war crimes and atrocities were committed against various ethnicities. But again, past hatreds have been buried. Germany and Europe reunified after the Cold War.

Ruins of Cathedral of St. Quentin, France, 1918 by Edward Harrs (NARA)

While Europeans understand the massive sufferings and human toll of a war ravaged continent, including the destructive nature of nationalistic pride, belligerency and retaliation, the same is not true for the U.S. And yet for well over 150 years, it has not faced a serious military threat, nor is there a plausible situation by which one could emerge.(2) With the world's largest economy, the most powerful military, a huge nuclear arsenal, a civilian population armed to the teeth, and protected by two oceans and friendly neighbors, one could assume the U.S. would be a peace-loving nation, that it felt safe and secure within its borders. But perhaps the very pillars of American security is the reason many Americans yearn for a global conflict. In other words, they have never really known the horrors and devastating long-term effects of an intra-continental war.

Berlin, 1945

Being a superpower, the U.S. also seems incapable of comprehending power balancing among other nations, something Europe and Eurasia have had to achieve to prevent the emergence of a dominant power and more conflicts. While geography has finally brought European and Eurasian nations together, both being careful to contain isolated and sectional conflicts, the U.S. gravely exaggerates international instabilities.

As two historical scholars warned: "If history has taught us anything, it is precisely the contrary of the lesson drawn by those who urge us to be the world's policeman.

It is that peace is normally divisible and that conflicts, whatever their origin, are normally of merely local or regional significances."(2) Behind this conventional wisdom are two dangers: a colossal armaments industry and a mass media that induces fear and imaginary threats.

Also undermining peace in our time is historical selectivity.

Politicians embellish the Munich Pacts (there were three meetings) of 1939, when Britain's Prime MinisterNeville Chamberlain signed an amiable treaty with Germany's Adolf Hitler. This isolated incident of where appeasement failed neglects the hundreds of others where it succeeded. Extremely complex conditions, where boundaries had been redrawn and ethnic minorities in turmoil, glossed over. Neither is the U.S. able to recognize that it might be the actual aggressor. The U.S. has admitted a role in toppling Ukraine's pro-Russian leader.

England and Europe found out exactly what it meant to attempt appeasement with a dictator

As a result, there has been a resurgence of neo-Nazis, attacking and massacring Ukrainian separatists. The most recent one, a defenseless hospital in Donetsk shelled by Ukraine troops(4), evokes the Odessa Massacre, in which dozens were burned to death in a union building.

"I cannot imagine any situation in which improved equipment of the Ukrainian army leads to President Putin being so impressed that he believes he well lose militarily… I understand the debate but I believe that more weapons will not lead to the progress Ukraine needs." (Does this also mean more U.S. troops as some Americans propose?)

Despite what U.S. war hawks are saying and Cold War warriors planning, peace in our time has won out far more many times than aggressive belligerency and preemptive war in our time. It is time for the U.S. to follow the lead of the European Union, which, and unlike the United States(6), has proven to be a model of peace and security, not to mention unity.

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We have already discussed in the first part of this analysis how the American geography dooms whoever controls the territory to being a global power, but there are a number of other outcomes that shape what that power will be like. The first and most critical is the impact of that geography on the American mindset.

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